Her (finally) Serene Highness

April 12, 1988|By AMY WILSON, Staff Writer

Her Serene Highness Princess Caroline of Monaco has politely asked to attend Wednesday`s rehearsals. She has asked to look on -- without the benefit of press in tow -- as two of her country`s finest dancers prepare to dance with some of this country`s finest dancers.

Officially, she is here to raise money -- by way of Thursday night`s gala performance with the Miami City Ballet -- for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

Officially, she is the reigning monarch`s arts ambassador and representative.

Officially, she will step off a plane tonight in Miami and she will meet with people who can do her ballet troupe some good. On Wednesday, she will be officially welcomed by the governor and an assortment of three mayors. She will then officially attend a gala dinner -- the $2,500-a-plate kind, at Southeast Bank in Miami.

On Thursday, she will hang around for a few photo opportunities, then be whisked away to watch as the Miami City Ballet and two of Les Ballets` dancers perform a ``Royal Gala Performance`` at Miami`s Gusman Cultural Center for the Performing Arts. After that, she will grace a post-ball black-tie supper reception at the Hotel Inter-Continental.

Unofficially, it is not so complicated.

Unofficially, she has asked to sit, without pomp, without circumstance -- and likely, without makeup -- to watch dancers dance in unmatched leotards, ratty leg warmers, torn shoes and bandeaus.

Unofficially, she is here to help realize her mother`s dream.

And, unofficially, she is here because she wants to be -- money and politics and nationalism and glitz and press coverage aside. Caroline Grimaldi Casiraghi loves the dance.

She comes by it honestly. Grace Kelly, her legendary mother, had loved the ballet as she had loved theater. Forced to give up her own participation in the latter, she tried to pass along her appreciation of the former.

Princess Grace did it by marching hand-in-hand with her 5-year-old daughter to a dilapidated Monte Carlo dance studio in the spring of 1963 and enrolling the little girl in dance classes.

There she found Marika Besobrasova, a ballet instructor who would become her strongest ally in establishing Monaco as a force in the world of dance.

Princess Grace and ``Madame B`` proved to be relentless but patient women.

Perhaps too patient. Upon Grace`s death in 1982, there still was much to be done.

But the lessons of her mother and her teacher were not in vain. Princess Caroline did in the ensuing three years what her mother had spent 20 years trying to: found a ballet company.

THE NEW FIRST LADY

Of course Grace`s death provided an unanticipated impetus to the project, but it was Caroline who got it done.

She was the one who persuaded Parliament to give her the funds. She was the one who hired a choreographer and an artistic director to help find dancers. She was the one who oversaw the restoration of the original Diaghilev rehearsal studios.

And she was the one who deflected the credit in December 1985 when the 40- member ballet troupe debuted in Monaco`s newly restored opera house.

This is the new and improved Princess Caroline -- a woman who, though born a princess, knew she never would bear the responsibility of ruling. And, for years, she acted accordingly.

Maybe she hadn`t really perceived what role she had in the monarchy, perhaps a pretty princess didn`t really have one. Especially in Monaco where women could think, but not out loud. Women`s jobs were family jobs and her mother had hers well in hand.

Then her seemingly ornamental mother died when she was 25. And all the responsibility that Princess Grace had assumed during 26 years of marriage devolved upon her. And she embraced it.

Princess Caroline then, at 31, is the First Lady of Monaco. (She hates that title, by the way, ``It sounds as if there were some hierarchy of ladies here.``)

As first lady, she also is the honorary president of Monaco`s Girl Guides, president of The Garden Club of Monaco, president of the Princess Grace Foundation and president of the Organizing Committee for the International Arts Foundation. And in her spare time, she raises three children under the age of 4.

LIFE UNDER GLASS

She also is the girl whose tacky spandex prompted 500 letters a day to be sent to her parents` pink palace, whose much-older fiance once dropped his pants and poured whiskey on himself in a Paris disco, who was photographed sunbathing nude with same, whose first child was born only five months after her second marriage and who has been hounded mercilessly since the day she was born.

That would be Jan. 23, 1957, nine months and four days after the reigning prince of Monaco and his American actress wife were married.

Her baptism was conducted by four bishops and 15 priests. Her nanny was nicknamed ``Killer`` -- ask Caroline about that -- and, for 14 months, she was the immediate heir to the throne of Monaco, a nation the size of New York`s Central Park.

And if her brother Albert had not followed, she would have inherited 24 titles and a throne that dates back 500 years.